The average student in China is said to know about 3500 characters when the student leaves secondary school. For those educated beyond the secondary school level the numbers are said to be significantly higher. But many people, even the best educated, find that sometimes they can not call to mind the exact look of a character even though they recognize it easily when they see it in print.
Not surprisingly, then, a continuing problem for even the most competent users of computer text-entry methods for Chinese is that they sometimes find themselves at a loss when trying to enter a character with non-phonetic entry methods, including keyboard entry and handwriting on an electronic pad or screen. Another barrier to such non-phonetic character entry is that the user sometimes forgets not only the look of the character but the standard stroke order of the character; each of these problems not only creates difficulties for handwriting input on an electronic pad or screen but also for non-phonetic keyboard entry. Another issue for handwriting recognition is that since handwriting recognition software is based on statistical data gained from a sample of possible users, the user of handwriting recognition programs not only can have the problem of not remembering the look of the character or the stroke order, but also may find that the computer does not recognize the entry simply because of the user's handwriting style. And handwriting acceptance by the recognition program usually will vary from character to character for an individual user.
Partly because of such problems with non-phonetic character entry, phonetic keyboard entry remains the character entry method most commonly used.
But neither are phonetic entry methods immune to character entry problems. Pinyin, a method of using Western alphabet to spell out the sounds of Chinese characters, is taught in virtually all of China's elementary schools. But many fail to master Pinyin so completely as to have great confidence in its use. Pinyin spelling is sometimes forgotten just when a user needs to input the character. This is especially true for those whose native tongue is not Beijing Mandarin (referred to also as Putonghua—‘the common language’, which is the standard taught in the schools) but another dialect of Chinese. It can also create difficulties for those whose native language is Mandarin but whose local pronunciation differs from Beijing Mandarin (the Putonghua standard) as much as does that between speakers of U.S. English in New England and Alabama. Yet another problem for phonetic character entry is that obviously neither Pinyin nor any other phonetic input method can be used to enter characters which the user cannot pronounce, a problem that can result both with unfamiliar characters as well as from common variations in pronunciation.
When the user's pronunciation of the needed character is not standard, or the user needs to input an unfamiliar character the difficulty of phonetic input often causes the user to turn to non-phonetic entry of the character, which as noted heretofore presents problems of its own.
Many methods of Chinese character input have a steep learning curve—which varies for each user—and all entry methods are imperfect. What is needed is a simple alternative method of text input which will allow a user to more easily input characters that the user can neither spell nor pronounce in standard Putonghua, and/or cannot visualize, and/or has forgotten the stroke order of, and/or has difficulty writing clearly on an electronic pad. Not only would this provide help to users of phonetic text input, it also would enhance the appeal of non-phonetic character input. Since the beginning of computer entry of Chinese characters several decades ago, difficulty with character image recall has been a significant barrier to widespread adoption of non-phonetic input methods, and continues to be so today.